


Apotheosis

by ivorygraves



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Biblical References, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Season/Series 02, Rescue Missions, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17086073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygraves/pseuds/ivorygraves
Summary: Three lost souls tied together. They have been here many times before.





	1. prologue

“And all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.” — Luke 8:52

 

* * *

Dying hurts.

 _It hurts_ , Kate thinks, though this is not entirely true. She does not think very much at all in her final moments. Words tangle and ebb through her mind like many scattered things, broken wisps of intent and conscience floating forward like the blood through the holes in her belly.

She feels it bloom in the back of her throat.

In another time, it would make her think of snakes.

The only thing she thinks about now — the way it grounds her so acutely it hurts to exist — is _Richard._

Richard, who hovers above her.

Richard, who begs her not to die.

As if she’s doing it to spite him.

As if he has the right to ask her for anything, much less her life.

Hatred laces through her like a physical entity. Or maybe it is adrenaline. Either way, it is all she knows.

Dying hurts and she hates him.

Her vision cuts in and out of focus. In a faraway sense, she thinks he might be crying. Or maybe it’s a trick of the light, casting down on them from atop the oil rig, showing her things she might otherwise not see. She chooses to believe it; it might as well be her last act of faith.

She didn’t know monsters could cry. She supposes she will die ignorant of many things.

She will die not knowing that the bullets blew through her intestines. She will die not knowing that the acid is slowly eroding her surrounding organs. She will die not knowing that the shrapnel propelled in a fanning-out pattern towards her heart, her lungs, her great vessels.

Everything in her breaks, in the most literal sense.

Instead of praying, she forsakes him.

“There’s no more love left, Richard,” she tells him between clenched teeth. She shreds her forgiveness and confession of love into pieces and dips them in poison. She hopes he chokes on it. “I hope you burn in hell.”

Something in his face changes, but she does not bother to decipher what it means.

Time seems to slow down.

Her fingers and toes go numb. Richard’s face and the lights above him blur into multitudes of color.

She feels like she’s floating.

The Milky Way spans out and winds around the sky like a road made of stars. It calls her home.

 _Mama_ , she thinks.

And then there is nothing at all.


	2. i.

“we were promised salvation, and all that’s left is neon prophecies and back alley hymns.” — _ON FINDING GOD AT THE END OF THE WORLD_ (pt. i) | [ **m.c.p** ](http://brotticelli.tumblr.com/post/114749730170/we-were-promised-salvation-and-all-thats-left)

 

* * *

“He’s waiting for you over there, Mr. Gecko,” the young waitress tells him, pointing over to a table in the corner of the room.

“Thanks, Peaches,” Seth says, clapping a hand against her shoulder. He feels weird about being called ‘Mr. Gecko’ — something about it dredges up a host of strange feelings he hasn’t been able to process yet — but he’s always been good at selectively attending to details.  

“My name’s Sarah —” Peaches starts.

“Right, yeah, that.” Seth waves a hand absentmindedly in her general direction. “You mentioned that.”

Peaches throws him a withering look he doesn’t see as he edges past the tray she’s carrying.

He’s got his eyes trained on the figure sitting at one of the booths in the back. He’s not surprised he’s here; Richard told him they were expecting company soon, but he’d been sparse with the details. Something about tying up loose ends and other bureaucratic bullshit. He’s prepared to flash a charming smile, sign some papers, and send this guy on his way.

The sooner he’s out, the better, in Seth’s opinion.

The guy catches sight of him. His eyes flicker and narrow into snake-like slits before returning to normal. “Mr. Gecko,” he acknowledges. “I’m not done with my drink yet.”

“Yeah, no, I see you’ve been nursing a real Bloody Mary there,” Seth comments, motioning to the glass of blood and ice with tabasco, two vodka shots and a single celery stock sitting innocently on a plate. _The fuck?_ he thinks, but he’s learned not to ask. “Jacknife’s best,” he adds for full effect.

The man makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “Where’s your brother?” he asks.

“He’s taking care of some business in the other room.”

“I was tasked to speak to the Gecko brothers,” he says easily, picking up his glass and swirling around its contents with the celery. “Brothers. Plural.”

“I got that,” Seth says. He leans forward a little. “Who, exactly, ‘tasked you’ to do this? Because last I checked, you were pretty friendly doing business with Malvado.”

The man sits his glass down and gazes at him in a perfect picture of neutrality. Seth’s blood hums out a warning of danger; under the table, he slides his hand over the pistol in his belt. “I do business with whomever is in charge of this establishment at the time, Mr. Gecko,” he says slowly. “Right now, that just so happens to be you and your brother.”

“A true middle man,” Seth smirks. “I like it.”

And suddenly, the danger seems to pass. The man breaks eye contact to reach for the briefcase sitting next to him in the booth. “Perhaps a change in scenery?”

“Still haven’t answered my question.”

“Our kind has a very specific way of dealing with hierarchies, Mr. Gecko. Especially when that includes the fall of two lords and the rise of two new ones.”

“And here I thought we were signing for ownership of this little honky tonk here.”

“Among other things,” the man says cryptically.

 _I hate bureaucrats_ , Seth thinks. He understands now why Richard hadn’t been able to tell him much about this visit. Not that they talk much these days anyway. “Right this way, then.” He gestures in a sweeping motion.   

Together they weave through the crowd of travelers and drunk dancers. It’s unnerving how familiar blood-and-celery man seems to be amongst the layout of Jacknife Jed’s, how at home he is with the way _he_ leads Seth to the hidden basement.

But hey, that’s fine with Seth. If there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s to never show his back to a threat.

“After you,” Seth says.

Bloody Mary quirks his lips into a knowing smile and steps into the darkness of the staircase.

* * *

When they enter the throne room — or whatever they’re calling it now — Richie raises an eyebrow at the pair of them from behind his desk.

A muscle jumps in Seth’s jaw. He tries to ignore the way his stomach clenches at how _easily_ his brother takes on this shtick, at how comfortable he seems sitting in that chair in this creepy fucking room like he’s some kind of king.

Apparently that’s exactly what they are now.

Bloody Mary wordlessly slides his briefcase onto the desk and pops it open. “For you,” he says and drops a pile of papers onto his desk.

Richie stares at them and then looks at Seth.

Seth shrugs. _How should I know?_

“So,” Richie starts, “what the hell is this?”

It’s abrupt, awkward and wholly _Richie_. Something in Seth loosens and settles at that.

“Forms,” Bloody Mary says. Just as Seth opens his mouth to tell him how unhelpful that is, he clarifies, “As the new owners of Jacknife Jed’s, it’s your responsibility to sign these and take them to Xibalba.”

“Shibuh-what now?” Seth asks.

Richie closes his eyes. “The underworld.”

“The underworld,” Seth repeats slowly. “Right. Sounds like a shitty nightclub.”

“Would you take this seriously?” Richie snaps.

The sudden anger cuts through him so swiftly Seth sees red dancing behind his eyes. “Me? I _am_ taking this seriously, _Richard_. Excuse me for being a little skeptical of the idea that we’re supposed to just waltz down into the pits of hell to do our taxes.”

“It’s a standard procedure,” Bloody Mary cuts in.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Will you _shut up_?” Richie hisses. “This is why your plans always get you in hot water. You can never just be quiet and consider everything in front of —”

“Oh, no. _No._ You’re not pulling that shit with me. Not after Kate —”

Richie’s eyes turn into yellow slits. “ _Don’t._ ”

He wants to keep needling and hammering his point home, but the repressed violence in his brother’s inhuman eyes stops him cold. It’s been a week since they took control of Jacknife — _since Kate fucking_ died, the traitorous thought creeps into his head — and this is the first time he’s seen his brother respond like this to her name. _About goddamn time._

“I’m sure you could say hello to her while you’re there.”

Both of them turn and stare.

Bloody Mary keeps his expression carefully neutral, but there’s a hint of humor etched into the lines of his face.

“Say that again,” Seth says.

“The girl,” Bloody Mary says. Seth feels a slimy knot of tension slither around and over itself in his gut at how _casual_ he sounds. “Kate. She’s in Xibalba.”

Beside him, Richie stills and falls so quiet the dead would wonder.

“No,” Seth says instantly. “That’s impossible.” He cannot even begin to sift through the thoughts flooding into his mind, or the way denial takes root and claws at him so viciously he thinks the room is spinning.

“‘Fraid not,” Bloody Mary replies.

Seth doesn’t know if he wants to scream or run a stake through his heart.

Richie grips his shoulder. “Seth.” His voice is strangled and something about it sounds far away, distant, like he’s hearing it from under water.

He shrugs his hold off and points an accusing finger at the smug bastard in front of him. “She wouldn’t be in the _underworld_ or whatever the fuck you called it,” Seth spits. “She believed in God. She— if she had to be anywhere, it’d be—” The words lodge themselves in his throat.

“What?” he asks, part mocking, part pity. “Heaven?”

Seth opens his mouth to speak, but can’t. All he can think about is her, and the cross around her neck, and the way she would hold her hands together in prayer sometimes in Mexico when she thought he was too high to notice.

Seth has never believed in God, but in a small corner of his heart, he’d hoped He was real anyway. For her sake.

The man in front of him seems to realize what he’s thinking, and slowly shakes his head. “Heaven isn’t real, Mr. Gecko,” he tells him. “Culebras come from a different realm entirely. Where did you think they came from? It doesn’t matter the creed or character. In the end, everyone finds their way to Xibalba.”

“She wasn’t a culebra,” Seth snarls. “She was human. She wasn’t — she was a good person.”

“I’m sure she was,” he says blithely. He turns to Richie and lifts a brow. “As much as I would love to stay and chat about moral philosophy and the afterlife, I do have other matters to attend to. I assume you will complete the necessary requirements in a timely manner?”

“Yes,” Richie replies. His eyes briefly flicker over in Seth’s direction. “I think you and your bosses will see that my brother and I have more to offer than you thought.”

_What the hell, Richard?_

What is he thinking?

The gears in Seth’s head begin to turn.

The man makes a low sound in his throat, a contemplating rumble that almost seems suspicious. “We wouldn’t expect any less from the notorious Gecko brothers,” he says finally, before slinking away into the darkness.

They both listen to the sound of his receding footsteps carry up the stairs before fading into silence.

Seth lets out a shaky breath. “Shit.” He runs a hand through his hair and throws a glare Richie’s way. “What the hell was that?”

Richie thumbs through the papers left on his desk, brows pinched in concentration. “What was what?”

“What else? She can’t really be there. He was full of shit.”

Richie cranes his neck to gaze at the ceiling and lets out a long suffering sigh. “He has no reason to lie.” He glances over at him and raises an eyebrow. “What are you? Some born-again Christian nutjob? After everything you’ve seen, the idea of an underworld is too much to believe?”

“No, jackass,” Seth says. “You know what Kate was like. She wouldn’t be in hell. That’s what I’m having a hard time believing. You and me, sure, but Kate? No way.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your blinders on, brother.”

Seth throws him a weird look. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Richie looks away.

“No, no, I saw that look. You want to be the big man in charge, then say what you mean, Richard. Or are you cool with being some vampire cartel lord’s lap dog now?”

Richie grits his teeth. “Shut up.”

“‘Cause from what I can see, brother, you practically rolled over to have your belly rubbed by that freak. He tells you Kate’s surrounded by fire and brimstone and you’re all ‘yes, sir, we have more to offer than you think.’”

Richie slams his fist so hard against the desk it cracks and splinters. His fangs jut out from behind his lips and his eyes glow in the dim light of the throne room. “I’m no one’s lackey!”

“Yeah?” Seth taunts. And while the smart thing to do would be not to poke the bear, to not rile up a predator, it’s the largest show of emotion he’s seen out of Richie in the past week and goddamnit, he is not letting this go. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Richie hisses; a drawn out, inhuman sound rises from low in his chest as he advances on Seth. “You think I don’t care? You think I _wanted_ this? That I wanted her to die?”

“I don’t know, Richard,” Seth says, deathly quiet. He can see the way his irises shift and narrow, watches the way his skin seems to morph and pull taut against his bones ― it’s as if his brother has completely shed his flesh and left a monster in his wake. “You said it yourself: you needed her to get to the blood well.” He fans his arms out in a wide, expansive gesture. “It looks like you got everything you wanted.”

And something in him changes. A fissure in the calm, collected part of Richie forms and spreads, and in that moment he looks so _lost_ it sends Seth reeling.

 _That’s the brother I know_ , Seth thinks.

They both stare at each other, their chests rising and falling with their heavy breathing.

“I have a plan,” Richie says finally. “I’m going to fix this.”

Seth takes a step back. “What? Are we going to steal her from hell? Is she our next score?”

Richie just looks at him.

“Jesus Christ,” Seth curses.

“You don’t have to come. I can handle it —”

“Are you kidding?” Seth says incredulously. “I told you. Everything goes to shit when we’re separated. I’m coming.”

Richie stares at him in open disbelief.

“What?” Seth asks.

“Not used to you going along with my plans.”

Seth snorts and waves a hand dismissively. “It’s on the way anyway. No one will even notice. Drop in for a little chitchat with the head honchos, exit stage left, sneak our way into wherever she is and haul ass out of there. Boom, easy.” He knows that isn’t true; hell, the entire state of Texas would probably seem like nothing next to whatever hellspawn comes their way. But it doesn’t matter. They’re used to being on the run. And Kate’s — well, it’s Kate.

The image of her standing on the side of a dark road flashes and sparks in his mind so sharply it reminds him of that split second after he’s taken a hit, when the world folds and unfolds in on itself and bursts into brightness before falling away to black.

He thinks of her small hands and the soft lines of her face spattered with blood as he shoves her out of that car. It’s the last time he ever saw her.

He won’t fuck this up. Not this time.

“How do we get there anyway?” he asks.

“No idea,” Richie says.

“Excuse me?” Seth says, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you were the expert on this shit. Snake queen didn’t give you the grand tour?”

Richie doesn’t respond at first; he just gives him a knowing, withering look. “She told me you helped her kill Malvado,” he says, as if that’s answer enough. Seth grasps the implication and rolls his eyes.

“What can I say? Sometimes we have common goals.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, brother,” Richie says, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “But seriously - she told me she knew what Xibalba was, but obviously she’s never been there. It’s not exactly a place you stroll into for Sunday brunch. I figured it was the least of my concerns.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Seth mutters. “Alright, then she’s out. What then? Crack open the books?”

“I have a better idea,” Richie says cryptically.

“Okay.” Seth motions for him to continue, expectant. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

* * *

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Sex Machine says. “What happened to your desk there, boss? Got a little overly excited?”

“It’s feng shui,” Richie snaps.

“I can’t believe this was your ‘better idea.’ I can’t believe I listened to you,” Seth groans.

“Sooo,” Sex Machine says, drawing out the word. “Since neither of you have killed me yet, I’m assuming we’re letting bygones be bygones?” He turns to Richie. “You’re, uh, not gonna use your freaky eye power on me again, are ya? Not that it wasn’t impressive, but I’ve kind of always liked the idea of free will —”

“Quiet,” Richie demands.

Sex Machine promptly closes his mouth.

Richie steps forward.

Sex Machine almost takes a step back before remembering he’s supposed to not be afraid. “For what it’s worth,” he starts, swallowing so thickly Seth can see his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, “I’m sorry about Kate.” Richie does not pause in his slow forward trek. “I never meant for that to happen. She may have kicked me in the family jewels a few times, but she was a good kid.”

Richie stops.

If it were literally anyone else, Seth might’ve felt sorry for the poor bastard.

“Listen to me very closely,” Richie says, reaching out and gripping Sex Machine by the neck. His eyes widen and bulge in their sockets; his face reddens as Richie’s fingers close brutally around his windpipe. “And I’m only gonna say this once. You help us, and I don’t use my ‘freaky eye power’ to tell you to kill yourself with your stupid cock gun.”

Sex Machine lets out a tiny, pathetic whine.

“Richard,” Seth warns. He doesn’t feel much sympathy for the man himself, but seeing his brother close in on him like some kind of methodical killer leaves a sour taste in his mouth. It sends him back to the Dew Drop Inn, to a bank teller with her eyes gouged out. He still remembers how almost _peaceful_ she’d looked, nestled gently under the blankets as if she were asleep and not fucking dead.

_This isn’t you._

Seth can’t find it in himself to say it. He doesn’t know if that makes him feel worse or better.

Richie glances over his shoulder at Seth briefly before he looks back at Sex Machine, who is still struggling in his grasp. He slowly loosens the steel grip of his fingers. “Got it?”

“ _Yeah_.” Sex Machine gasps and gives him a weak a-okay sign while his other hand clutches at his neck. “You got it, boss. Whatever you need.”

“Tell me about Xibalba,” Richie says.

Sex Machine raises his eyebrows in surprise, clearly interested. “The Place of Fear,” he says reverently. “Ruled by the great Mayan death gods and their vassals. Where the great Hero Twins themselves made their names.” He pauses. “Something tells me you’re not interested in that, though. What exactly do you want to know?”

“Hypothetically,” Seth starts, “if someone wanted to get to Chibaba—”

“ _Xibalba_ ,” Sex Machine corrects.

“Shi—whatever.” Seth waves a hand dismissively. “If someone wanted to find it, how would they get there?”

“Uh. You do realize I haven’t done a lot of field work in that particular area, right?” Sex Machine says, smiling nervously. He kneads his hands absentmindedly, gaze flickering back and forth between him and Richie. _I’ve always liked you better_ , his eyes seem to say, pleading for mercy or some kind of out.

Seth rolls his eyes. “Which is why I said hypothetically, genius.”

“Right,” he says slowly. “Hypothetically. Gotcha.” He sighs and runs a tired hand through his blond hair. “Well, the K’ichie people believed there were many doorways that led to Xibalba. Legend tells us about a network of caves in Guatemala that are supposed to be an entrance, spanning all the way back to sixteenth century Verapaz. If you wanna get metaphysical, to some Maya peoples the Milky Way is supposed to be a road that lost souls walk on to reach their fate in the underworld.” Sex Machine spreads his hands wide, like he’s presenting some theatrical lecture to a room full of bleary-eyed undergrads at Alamo State. “Pretty poetic, huh?”

“Alright, alright, Pablo Neruda,” Seth says. “We don’t have time to go galavanting in some goddamn caves past the border. We need a quicker way.”

“Thought you said this was hypothetical,” Sex Machine points out.

“I may have fudged the details a bit.” Seth throws him a sarcastic grin. “Do you know or not? We don’t got all day, professor. My brother’s lookin’ a little underwhelmed by your performance. Can’t go leavin’ a bad review on the faculty evaluation forms, can we?”

Sex Machine glances over at Richie.

Richie’s eyes flash dangerously.

“Well,” Sex Machine says hesitantly. “There’s always the… obvious method.”

Seth lets out an impatient noise. “Which is — ?”

“Dying,” Richie supplies.

Seth shakes his head. “No way.”

Sex Machine shrugs. “I mean, it’s how most people get there.”

“He has a point,” Richie says.

Seth shoots him a look. “You can’t be serious.”

A muscle jumps in Richie’s jaw, eyes dark and pensive. It’s something Seth has always noticed in his brother; how he always seems to wrestle with the silent energy of his own thoughts, analyzing and picking apart each individual component and layer until he got to the beating heart of a thing.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” Richie says quietly.

“We’re _not_ killing ourselves,” Seth stresses, voice tight.

“Then maybe you should start contributing something of value instead of bitching and moaning about how every one of my plans won’t work!”

“I wouldn’t have to bitch and moan about it if your plans didn’t include _ritual suicide_.”

“Why can’t you just _listen_ to me for once —”

“Because it’s fucking crazy, Richard!”

Richie stares at him darkly. “I’m _not_ crazy.”

All at once, the fight leaves Seth. “Christ. I never said you were,” he says tiredly. He runs a hand over his face and digs the heel of his hands so hard against his eyes he sees lights dancing behind them. “I’m just saying we need to be fucking sensible about this. We have to be able to get back from whatever circle of hell we fall into.”

“So,” Sex Machine begins awkwardly, as if to let them know he’s still there. “There are sacrifices that can be made. Without you two being finito.”

Seth throws his hands in the air. “Why didn’t you say that sooner?!”

Sex Machine mirrors his motion, splaying his arms out in exasperation. “You two were busy goin’ at it!” Under his breath, he mutters, “And not in the fun way.”

Seth snaps his fingers. “Okay, bring the train back on track,” he says. “What kind of sacrifices are we talking about? Is this cutting-heads-off-chickens santería bullshit? Pissing in the dirt? What?”

“What you’re basically doing is making a rift in the universe,” Sex Machine says. “A small one, but big enough for you to walk on through. To do that, you need to offer something in return, to pay dividends to the gods. And you need the power to give it some oomph. Not just anyone can do that. Even good ol’ Carlitos only glimpsed the place of dead roads when he was lookin’ for that blood well. No matter how much he yelled about how he was a god himself or how much innocent blood he spilled — or, well, I guess it wasn’t really him who did the spilling...” He pauses, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Get to the point,” Richie murmurs. Something in his voice — that quiet, vague sense of despondency creeping into his tone, almost imperceivable if not colored by years worth of familiarity — makes a tendril of suspicion curl inside his gut.

“Back up. What does that mean?” he asks, turning back to Sex Machine. “It ‘wasn’t him who did the spilling’?”

Sex Machine glances back and forth between them. “Oh,” he says. His eyes widen a bit before coughing nervously. Seth can feel the looming pressure of a vein pulsing in his temples. “It’s not really important,” he says surreptitiously. “Point is, Xibalba deals in souls. A _life force_. You want in, you gotta offer something to entice ‘em to open the gates. And you need to have the power of a god to withstand it.”

“Yeah. Great. Power of a god. You can find it in every happy meal.”

“I dunno,” Sex Machine hums. “Two brothers rising to the throne, replacing two dead lords of the night… I’d say your odds of being on the godly spectrum are fairly high.”

Seth wants to tell him he doesn’t feel godly.

He’s the furthest thing from it.

Instead, he just sighs. “Alright,” he allows. “And this ‘life force’ thing. If it’s not us killing ourselves, are you saying we have to go out and shank some poor bastard?” He looks sharply at Richie. “We’re _not_ —”

“Shut up, I wasn’t gonna say anything,” Richie grinds out.

“You already got it,” Sex Machine says simply. “The blood well.”

“Uh, yeah, the tanker kind of went boom, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Doesn’t matter. It was hidden away under that oil rig for years. The earth has long soaked up some of it by now. Plus you got your other link there; little Katie died in the same place those souls were released.”

Beside him, Richie closes his eyes.

“And?” Seth presses, ignoring the sickly tightening in his chest.

“And that place is like a power plant, brimming with the energy of lost souls. If you can’t make a path out of that, nothing can,” he finishes.

Richie looks over at him.

Seth looks back.

It’s one of those moments where things feel _normal_ between them, where they can communicate without words and be on the same page. No snake vampires or portals to hell or teenage girls complicating everything.

He’ll settle for what he can get.

“You know, doc,” Seth says, “maybe we’ll keep you around after all.”

“At your service, compadres.” He gives a brief salute. “You can always count on Sex Machine to get you goin’.”

“I’m gonna need you to never, ever say that again.”

* * *

The next few hours pass in a blur. They are standing in front of the oil rig that housed the blood well. The air is cool on his skin, almost crisp as the dying autumn leaves float down softly from the treetops and crunch under his shoes. Richie is tilting his head to the side, a severe and pensive expression carved into his features. He seems to be following the direction of the wind in the cold deep night, like he notices something Seth doesn’t.

Fleetingly, Seth wonders if he’s caught a lingering trace of her scent before squashing the thought down.

“That it?” Seth asks quietly.

Richie nods. “Yeah.”

“Doesn’t look like much,” he comments. Richie doesn’t respond.

This is the first time he’s bothered to see it; he’s never been one for history. It didn’t seem to matter much anyway. A thousand souls crying under the earth had all been washed away by the rain. He could go a whole lifetime without hearing about it again and it would still be too soon, as far as he’s concerned. A bunch of snakes hissing and waiting to strike, just to get a taste of it. No fucking thanks.

But it doesn’t really matter what he wants. He’s here for the long haul, for better or worst. _Who am I kidding? It’s already the goddamn worst_ , he thinks grimly. He’s never been one for optimism, either.

Sex Machine hums some song off-key he can’t place from the other side of the rig. He’s sifting through some old torn up book he’d grabbed from his creepy Friday the 13th basement in his unassuming Norman Bates Psycho house.

Seth steps over the dips and ridges in the dirt to climb onto the platform. He swallows thickly when his eyes land on the dried blood, long-seeped into the wood.

He feels a surge of fury ignite in his blood. He relishes in it in that moment. It’s always been better than grief. “That where it happened?” he asks lowly. “That where she died?”

“C’mon, Seth, this isn’t helping —” Richie starts.

“Fucking _don’t_ ,” he seethes. “You never told me what happened to her.”

Not that he’d asked. But as he stares at the evidence, takes in the sight of all that’s left behind of her, he can’t help but wonder how it happened. If it was quick or not. If it hurt.

He has a sickening feeling that he already knows the answer. But he needs to hear it anyway. He needs it like a hit of heroin when his nerves are shot and just needs everything to fucking — _stop_ —

Just to fucking stop. But she’s not there to hold the needle for him anymore.

Richie is watching him steadily. He knows he’s sizing him up, considering and analyzing and working all the angles. It infuriates him and stops him in his tracks at the same time, because he knows he’s ready to say something but isn’t sure how. His brother does not say or do anything delicately. “She got shot,” he says finally. “Carlos shot her through the stomach. Twice. She bled out.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, so goddamn _calm._ It makes him think of the liquor store, of the motel and the Fullers’ RV when he so calmly talked about needing to murder the people around him. He knows that Richie wasn’t _his_ Richie, not really; he knows now that he was swept up in someone else’s influence, but the image still won’t leave his head. He cannot reconcile that violent specter of Richie with this current one and not see similar things. And it scares the shit out of him.

“Great,” he spits. “Fucking _fantastic._ ”

“She ran. She tried to get away and wasn’t quick enough —”

“I don’t want to fucking _hear_ it, Richard,” he hisses. “You knew, you _knew_ it was dangerous for her but you let her go anyway. All for some stupid goddamn hole in the ground.”

“Do me a favor, Seth,” Richie says blankly, “and tell me something I don’t know.”

He wants to lunge for him, wants to grab onto his jacket collar and haul him to the ground so he can take a good swing like he did back at Jacknife Jed’s. He wants to scream and kick and rage like he did with Carlos, wants to cut something apart and send it across the four corners of the earth like how they let Scott have the final blow and —

— and god, _Scott_ , he fucking forgot, they haven’t even _told_ him —

“Just — _shit!_ ”

He twists and slams his fist against the railing.

“Seth! _Seth!_ ” Richie shouts. He yanks Seth by the back of his collar and grabs onto his wrist before he can throw another punch. “Are you crazy?!” he exclaims, voice laden in barely restrained incredulity and agitation.

A broken laugh escapes Seth’s lips. Richie lets him go and he turns to glare at him, mouth twisted in a sick-looking version of a smile. “You are unbelievable,” he breathes out. “Un- _fucking_ -believable.”

Richie closes his eyes. “Let’s just get it done.”

“Yeah,” Seth agrees, holding his bloody knuckles limply against his side. He barely feels them. “The sooner the better.”

“Alright, compañeros,” Sex Machine calls from his side of the rig. He can say whatever he wants about the man, but he sure knows how to worm his way out of a crossfire when he needs to. “All’s good on my end.”

“What do we have to do?” Seth asks.

“I’m gonna read out of this passage, which should open up the rift. All you fellas gotta do is what I told you on the way here,” he explains. “Ready?”

Wordlessly, Richie takes something out of his pocket and hands it over to Seth.

Nestled in Richie’s palm are two of Malvado’s rings.

Seth feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He’d opened the box encasing them a week ago and had to close it again almost as soon as he had. Something about it creeps him out in a way he can’t explain. He can feel a shift in the air every time he looks at them, feels some kind of pulse, some kind of _presence_ even when no one else is in the room. It’s the same sense of dread that crept up on him back at the Titty Twister; that something was about to go horribly, horribly wrong, and he could do nothing but watch it all burn to the ground. He can still back out if he wants to.

Silently, he takes one from Richie’s outstretched hand and slips it onto his finger.

Richie does the same. If he feels the same sense of wrongness that Seth does, he doesn’t show it.

Sex Machine begins speaking in a low tone, his words slowly building on each other before quickening into an insistent chant.

Seth can’t believe they’re actually doing this. But he won’t turn away now. He can’t.

With the tip of the ring, they cut into the flesh of their palms and let the blood drip into the dirt below.

 _Power of a god_ , he thinks distantly.

At first, nothing happens. Seth almost turns to ask what the hell is exactly supposed to happen here, if they did this wrong, but then he feels it.

Slowly, the wind begins to pick up. Somewhere in the distance, the echoing screech of a bird — an owl? — makes goosebumps rise on his flesh. He feels like one of those animals Richie talked about years ago, about the tsunami and how they all just seemed to _know_ that shit was about to go down and fled like their lives depended on it, like their terror was the only thing keeping them afloat from the crushing weight of the sea.

Apparently those animals are smarter than them.

“Richard?” Seth calls out, eyes darting to look at his brother standing ramrod straight next to him. He can barely hear his own voice against the wind whistling in his ears; he flings his arm out in front of his face to stop stray rocks and twigs from hitting him in the face.

Below them, a portal begins to form. It swirls and glows an unearthly blue, like a hurricane in a bottle, air and water and something so freezing cold it reaches into his chest and _twists_ and wrenches him apart so cleanly he thinks his organs have been ripped out of him.

Richie stares back at him over the soft glow of hell. “Got your balls on?” he asks.

He holds his bleeding fist and thinks of Kate.

“Screwed on tight,” Seth says.

They jump.


	3. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's commented so far! I appreciate all the feedback. For people who've been asking: yes, this is a Seth/Kate/Richie OT3 fic. I tagged each individual ship since this story will have plenty flavorings of both Seth/Kate and Richie/Kate by themselves, but ultimately, it's about the three of them together. It's just going to be a slow, sloooow burn until we get there. Sorry for the confusion! Tags have been added to reflect this.

“Sooner or later you will call my name,

cry of loss, mistaken

cry of recognition, of arrested need

for someone who exists in memory: no voice

carries to that kingdom.”

— Louise Glück, from “Marathon,” _The Triumph of Achilles_

 

* * *

And then there is memory.

Not a memory of how she came to be submerged here in the cold depths of a sunlit lake, for she has been here many times, but a memory of before, one that is older than her and time itself.

She hears voices but they sound like an echo from another place, another time, another person.

She can hear screaming.

It feels like it’s inside of her. It might be her.

She can’t tell.

— _all those souls, immersed in their own grief and tattered faith —_

 _—_ she sees the shimmering outline of something above her, of some _one_ , a figure silhouetted against the sun and thrown in shadows, and in her memory her body betrays her and tears come to her eyes, though no one would know that; not the voices reverberating off her bones, not the turbidity of the water, not the man whose name she can’t remember but who she knows had the eyes of a prophet _—_

_Daddy?_

She is all in white. She is crossing her arms over her chest. There is a hand holding her wrists together.

She remembers this day.

And suddenly that other memory _—_ that one of blood and pain and fear and death _—_ falls away and leaves behind only the rhythm of her silent heart and, like His everlasting love, peace and confirmation of belief in her own salvation.

Under the bright Texas sky, in the lake behind Bethel Baptist Church, Kate Fuller is buried and raised in the likeness of His death and resurrection.

It is the happiest memory of her life.

She wants to live in it forever.

Her father will kiss her forehead and give her a golden cross, which she will wear until she does not.

Her mother will call her her blessed girl, which she will carry with her until she does not.

Her brother will be silent but smiling, which she will remember until she does not.

One day she will die, ignorant of many things.

But she knows all of these things to be true. It is enough.

She feels herself being lifted from the water. For some reason, it makes her chest ache. She cannot say why.

All she can do is cry, and let herself be tipped up, _up_ , until she breaks the surface of the water, until she gasps and feels the air in her lungs like fire, like the burning of Rome _—_

* * *

Richie wakes up gasping.

He clutches his throat, curls up onto his side and coughs up the water in his lungs. Distantly, he thinks about how dumb that is, how a portal to hell almost _drowned_ them, of all things, but he supposes he should just be grateful they haven’t _died._ Can they die? He brushes that thought away as soon as it appears, because if there’s one thing Richie’s learned, anyone can die any place at any time. He can picture Seth now, snorting in amusement and telling him he’s watched the Matrix too many times.

_Seth._

Richie wrenches himself up into a sitting position, his hands flying to adjust his glasses (somehow still intact) as he searches around wildly for his brother. “Seth,” he calls hoarsely. “Seth!”

Eventually, his eyes land on Seth about a hundred feet away; his body lies crumpled and vulnerable on the ground. He isn’t moving.

For a blinding, burning moment, Richie thinks he’s dead.

No. _No —_

He’s at his side so quickly he barely registers anything else.

“Seth,” he says loudly, rolling him over onto his back. Seth does not respond. “Seth! Goddamnit. God _damnit_ , wake up!” He jostles him some more and smacks his palm sharply against his face while his other pumps against his chest. “You’re not gonna insist on coming here with me and then just check out,” he says between clenched teeth. “Hey, asshole, we’ve got a job to do!”

Seth erupts into a coughing fit.

Richie’s dead heart squeezes in relief.

“What the _hell_?” Seth sputters, practically dry heaving as his lungs struggle to find oxygen. His chest rises and falls with his heavy breathing as he searches around, wild-eyed, until he finds Richie and seems to settle. “Were you calling me an asshole? And punching me in the face? What the fuck, Richard?”

His worry was short-lived.

“ _You’re welcome_ ,” Richie says bitingly. “It’s not like you were drowning in your own fluids or anything.”

“Come on, that would be stupid,” he says dismissively. He glances around, seeming to realize for the first time where they are. “So, this is it?”

“Apparently,” Richie says.

Seth’s eyebrows knit together as he slowly gets to his feet. “Looks like Kansas.”

“Welcome to hell, the sunflower state,” he grouses, but silently agrees with his brother’s assessment. He clenches his jaw as he sweeps his gaze over the tall oak trees, the rustling grass, the all-too familiar way the moon above shines down on them.

He knows exactly where they are. “Emporia.”

Seth sends him a sidelong glance. “What?”

“This is Emporia,” Richie repeats. “Or a fake alternate universe version of it, anyway.”

“Emporia. You mean that place you lived in while I was in the clink? In the woods? That Emporia?” Seth’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

Richie gives him a withering look.

Seth lets out a low whistle. “Well I’ll be damned.”

Richie could crack the obvious joke about literal damnation. It’s probably what Seth’s expecting, what he’s come to anticipate from their dynamic after years of growing up and working together. But he finds that he’s no longer in a mood for joking, even on a surface level. He has a feeling that Seth isn’t either, no matter how much he’s trying to put on a nonchalant veneer. It’s what he always does when he’s unsure of himself or scared shitless. He supposes it gets his brother through; he can’t fault him that.  

The screech of an owl in the distance cuts swiftly into Richie’s thoughts.

He sighs. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Seth asks. “Through the forest?”

“Where else? I know the area.”

“Okay, you know the real, _Earth_ version of the area,” Seth argues. “But that? That’s some weird constructed hell fantasy version of the area you know. It’s practically staring at you and going ‘come on in, Richie, the water’s fine, we’ll only devour your spleen and maybe your liver if you’re’ _—_ hey, where the hell are you going? I’m still talking to you. Richard. _Richard!_ Goddamnit.”

Richie hears him following from behind him. “This is where we have to go,” he calls over his shoulder as Seth continues cursing as he weaves through the fallen branches on the ground.

“How do you know?” Seth calls back warily. His tone sends a ripple of annoyance through Richie; it’s that sense of disbelief, that note of unwillingness to just _trust_ him that seems to color their every interaction. He tries to push those emotions aside; he’s not such an amateur to let it get in the way of the mark, but he would be lying if it didn’t grate on his nerves. So rather than pushing them aside, he pushes them _down_ , down into that chasm of thought and feeling he tells himself not to touch.

Richie continues walking, staring unwaveringly into the night. He gives his brother the only answer he can. “I just know.”

* * *

She is sitting in the front pew of her daddy’s church back in Bethel. She is wearing a soft white dress and a pink cardigan; it is her Sunday best. She remembers how Kyle used to tell her how rosy it made her cheeks look, how pretty she was.

She can hear singing.

She closes her eyes and lets the soft hymns of the congregation drown her burdens. It’s a feeling of comfort she hasn’t known in such a long time; the sense of community, the feeling of home. Her fingers tremble as they rest along the spine of a Bible sitting next to her, a sudden upwell of emotion settling in the cavern of her chest. Gently, almost lovingly, she opens it onto a random page.

_Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. Psalm 55:22._

It is a passage she knows well. She remembers her mother whispering it to herself all the time when she thought no one else could hear. She remembers how her hands would shake as she held them together in prayer, how her eyes would close and her breath would hitch in some unspoken pain. She had always assumed it was another migraine.

Something in her shifts and yawns wide open.

The voices stop.

She looks up and turns to glance behind her for the first time.

She is alone.

“Hello?” she calls out. “Is anyone there? Daddy? Scott?”

_Mama?_

A new emotion takes a hold of her now. It is one she has never felt while standing in her daddy’s church, one she cannot reconcile with everything graceful and godly and good.

She is afraid.

She does not know why.

All she knows, somehow, is that she was not here before. Not _before_ before, because she has been here many times, but before, as in a second ago.

For some reason, she remembers being outside. She remembers being baptized. She remembers her daddy smiling at her in the blazing Texas sun.

Didn’t she?

He must have.

She rises and takes a step forward. Only one. The floorboard groans below her. It is the same one her daddy keeps saying he’ll fix, but it causes her heart to jump in her throat anyway.

If she is not careful, she will choke on it.

And then she sees it.

In the cacophony of silence, she sees it blur into existence in her peripheral vision.

She does not move.

She can hear screaming.

It is inside of her.

She does not move.

She thinks about claws and teeth.

She thinks about how fast it would be, if she looks.

If it’d go for her jugular.

She does not move.

She hears an empty pocket in the silence. A lingering shadow. A presence.

It’s right behind her.

She does not look. She does not look she cannot look she must not look she _will not look —_

She feels a hand rest on her shoulder.

She looks.

Nothing.

She breathes for the first time in what feels like minutes. _But that isn’t right_ , she thinks. It must have only been seconds. Wasn’t it?

Her heart climbs down from her throat and tries to stop quivering. It tries to be logical. To be brave.

And then something touches her shoulder again.

This time she screams so loudly she’s sure God can hear it, twists herself around and lands a kick to whatever this _thing_ is that is trying to devour her _—_

It hisses and buckles before her.

She breathes harshly, still poised in a defensive position.

The thing groans and starts to chuckle. Her heart leaps in her chest because no, it couldn’t be _—_

“Didn’t know Jesus taught his followers how to kick the crap out of people,” it says in amusement, and it makes her want to cry. “To be honest, I was hoping I wouldn’t see you for a long time.”

In a broken, quiet voice, Kate whispers, “Rafa?”

Rafa smiles. “Hello again, Katalina.”

* * *

“Do you still ‘just know’ where we’re going?”

It had only been twenty minutes. Richie knows this because Seth had been checking his watch nonstop and making it his mission to let him know every time they reached a five-minute milestone.

“For the fourth goddamn time, would you just chill out?” Richie shoots back at him. “I can’t concentrate when you keep freaking out on me.”

“I’m not freaking out, Richard,” Seth says stiffly. “I just don’t like walking around with no idea where the hell we’re going, or where we’re even supposed to be. You’d think they’d send some kind of ambassador to come get us.”

“Maybe it’s a test,” Richie supplies. “To see if we’re worthy.”

“‘Worthy,’” Seth parrots back, using scare quotes. “Oh yeah, and then when we prove ourselves, we can just go ahead and lift Thor’s hammer while we’re at it. Crush some skulls, wear a red cape, call it a day.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “You know it’s true.”

Seth sighs. “Yeah, I _know_ it’s true, but it doesn’t stop me from being pissed about it. And the one thing that gets me is why this?”

“Why this what?”

“Uh, what else?” Seth asks, motioning around at their surroundings. “Why Emporia? Why the woods you spent five years in? Seriously, as shitty as it probably was living here all that time, you’d think there’d be more… fire? Brimstone? Torture? Maybe a little Barry White, for good measure.”

Richie resists the urge to tell him he got along just fine without him.

He’s a survivor. He wishes Seth could see that.

Instead, he says, “It’s probably like the labyrinth. It’s constructed from our memories.”

“Sure, okay, I could see that,” Seth agrees. “But why this memory? I’m sure you’ve had worse memories than this.”

The image of her lying still in her own blood sparks in his mind so quick and unbidden Richie almost wonders if someone else put it there.

But he knows he’s alone in his own head.

If he’s being honest, he hasn’t stopped thinking about her. He has tried _— god_ , has he tried _—_ but her voice, twisted with hatred and pain, keeps rising to the forefront of his mind. _There’s no more love left, Richard. I hope you burn in hell._

And it’s kind of pathetic, really, how badly he’d wanted to beg her to stay. To let him turn her. He had been serious when he threatened Scott he’d do it if he didn’t. He had been fully prepared to sink his teeth into her, to pump her full of venom, to save her life. In that moment nothing else mattered.

But when he reached her, when the sight of her tears and resolve to die finally shook his blinding panic loose, all he could do was sit at her side. Because he realized he couldn’t bring himself to do it if she didn’t want it. Not if she wanted to let go. It’s a choice he never got to make, down in the drudges of the Twister when he was bleeding out and so desperate to die human than live as a monster.

He would rather her die her own way than live under his will. And while he does not regret who or what he is, it is still a cruelty he could not bear to inflict on her. But if she had asked him to, he would have in a heartbeat.

In the end, maybe it doesn’t matter. She died hating him anyway.

And maybe it is a cruelty, really, to be where he is now and unable to fulfill her dying wish.

“Richard?” Seth snaps his fingers in front of his face. “You still in there?”

Richie swallows and shakes his head. “Yeah.” He keeps his eyes trained on the path before him, partly out of vigilance and partly because he knows Seth is giving him an inquisitive look that he’s not prepared to face at the moment. He searches for their previous thread of conversation and grasps back on. “I don’t think bad memories are the point.”

“Which means...?”

“Look around you, Seth. Why would anyone bother dumping these kinds of memories on us if it’s supposed to be the underworld?”

Seth shrugs. “To screw with us.”

“Exactly,” Richie answers. “Why bother showing you your worst memories when you can turn the good ones into some kind of Ridley Scott horror flick? You think you’re safe but as soon as you realize something is off, you’ve already got some alien hellspawn exploding out of your gut.”

“Jesus Christ, Richard, you know I hate that movie.” He runs a hand over his face, tugging down on the flesh just beneath his eyes. Very slowly, though, he looks back up at him and puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Wait. What were you saying about good memories?”

He knows exactly where this conversation is headed. “We don’t have time for this.”

“No, no, you said this place turns good memories into bad ones. Are you saying _this_ is supposed to be a good memory for you?” Seth narrows his eyes, and there it is again. It’s that look that Richie hates; that judging, angry look, the one that makes him feel like he’s some sort of failure or disappointment.

“Maybe it was,” Richie says quietly, keeping his gaze steady on his brother’s face. He refuses to back down.

“Seriously?” Seth asks, incredulous. “For god’s sake, Richard, you were _homeless_ —”

“Because I _chose_ to be,” Richie cuts in heatedly. “Just because it wasn’t something you’d choose for yourself doesn’t mean it’s the wrong choice.”

“Bullshit,” Seth snaps. “No one _chooses_ to be some hobo rotting away in the woods. What the hell am I supposed to think when I hear you’re out in the boonies living off of squirrels like Henry fucking Theroux?”

“Like you’ve ever read Theroux! And who told you that, huh? Vanessa? I told her she should’ve kept her and her goddamn judgmental shrink friend out of my business _—_ ”

“Hey, keep her out of this! She was just trying to look out for you while I wasn’t there —”

“I’m not a _fucking_ child, Seth!” Richie yells. “I didn’t need to be ‘looked out for’. I didn’t need to be babysat like some special needs reject who can’t even take a crap without someone sitting him on the can! I am more than capable without you!”

“Yeah, that’s why everything went to hell when we were separated, right? It’s why you and snake queen used an entire truckload of little girls to find the boss’ hideout? Because you’re so damn ‘capable’?” Seth bites back.

“No one was supposed to get hurt in that plan and you know it! Don’t be a hypocrite.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Seriously?” Richie says incredulously. “You can make plans that involve kidnapping an entire innocent family to make a deal with a piece of shit like Carlos but when _I_ make a plan to take down Malvado, suddenly you’ve got some moral hangup about it? Or is it because you just can’t stand to see me running the shots for once?”

“Jesus, are you hearing yourself? I never wanted them to get hurt either, and the only reason I tried to make a deal was so I could get _you_ to El Rey!”

“So what do you want from me, Seth? Hm? You want me to thank you? Tell you how amazing and selfless of a brother you are for disregarding everything I said about it being a bad idea the _entire way there_ , just so you could feel good about yourself? ‘Cause yeah, really, Seth, you did a great job with that one.”

“How was I supposed to know there’d be an entire bar with freaking snake vampires waiting for us when we got there? You were telling me you were seeing _demons_ , Richard, that some invisible _presence_ was making you want to kill a bunch of people! How was I supposed to know you weren’t just —” Seth stops abruptly.

“That I wasn’t just what?” Richie asks lowly. He can’t tell if his face has contorted into its snake form, but he can feel his fangs itching against the roof of his mouth, desperate to reveal themselves. “ _Crazy_?”

Seth has the decency to look guilty, though it’s tempered by self-righteousness. “You killed that bank teller, Richard. You carved her _eyes_ out,” he says quietly, eyes bright with rage. “You can’t blame me for wondering.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Richie hisses through clenched teeth. His heart has long stopped pumping blood, but he can feel the heat of it anyway, feels the rush of adrenaline simmering under his skin. “You don’t get it because you don’t _want_ to get it.”

Seth scoffs and shakes his head. “You know what?” He throws his hands up. “I don’t need to listen to this shit.”

“Yeah, that’s right, just walk away, Seth. Put your fingers in your ears and just pretend you can’t hear anything you don’t like. Just like you always do.”

Seth whirls around and stomps back over to him. He raises his hands like he can’t decide if he wants to punch him or grab him by the collar and slam him to the ground. “Listen here, you prick —”

And then everything goes to hell.

* * *

The world floods with music.

Kate isn’t sure when the emptiness in the room filled itself, but she grasps onto it and holds on for dear life. She thinks that perhaps it has always been this way, that this place has never changed.

Maybe it’s just her.

She isn’t even sure how long she’s been staring, or if the sound coming out of her mouth is her struggling for words or trying to choke back the strangled sob lodged in her throat.

All she knows is that Rafa is standing in front of her, bathed in the sunlight streaming in through the church windows.

She feels tears prickle the corners of her eyes.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Rafa jokes. He looks the same as he did when he was alive, all bright eyes and dimpled cheeks and that boyish grin she’d grown so fond of in such a short period of time.

She can’t help but smile back at him because it just seems like such a _Rafa_ thing to say. “Because I have,” she says in wonderment. “Are you real?” she asks. She desperately wants to believe he is, wants to fall into that truth like it’s something holy. “I’m not dreamin’ again, am I?”

She isn’t sure if she could bear it if he’s another conjured comfort from her subconscious.

Rafa raises an eyebrow. “As much as I like the idea of being your dream man,” he says carefully, “I can assure you that I am as real as you are, Katalina.”

“It’s Kate,” she says reflexively.

“I thought we established that I like ‘Katalina’ better,” he replies easily. But just as quickly, the laidback smile falls into a pensive frown. “Seriously though, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. Why are you here anyway?” he asks, taking a step towards her.

Kate sighs and sits down on the pew. He silently follows her example. “I made a mistake,” she starts and trails off. She knows that this is a good a place to start as any, but the rest dies on her lips as she struggles to find the words. Her hands knead themselves in her lap as she searches for the story that matters most.

“Think we’ve all been there at some point,” Rafa says softly, mostly to fill the void in her silence.

Kate huffs out a tiny, broken laugh. “Not like this.” She tugs a stray strand of hair behind her ear and lets out a shaky breath. For some reason she hasn’t thought much of this since she came here — and god, really, she still can’t place how long it’s been — but now that Rafa is sitting here with her, whole and solid and not a million particles of dust lost to the wind, her memories blow wide open and crowd into the hollowed spaces of her mind. “Do you remember how I told you I wanted to save my brother?” she asks.

“I’m guessing that didn’t go well,” he says.

“That’s an understatement,” she says, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. “I went home for the first time in months because I had a feeling he’d be there. He’d been feeding on the neighborhood cats, and I thought it was a sign we could work through things, you know? That we could find a solution so he wouldn’t have to eat people… but I was wrong. He tried to bite me. He said he wanted to make me stronger, that it was the only way he could _protect_ me.” She spits out the word like it’s poison without meaning to, but she can’t deny that that’s what it feels like when she thinks back to all the horrible things that have happened to her in the guise of someone else’s protection. She thinks back to how he cornered her in their family home and wrestled her to the ground, how she thrashed and fought. She is certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would have died that night if Ranger Gonzalez hadn’t been there.

 _Guess it was just delaying the inevitable_ , she thinks bitterly.

“Sounds like a troubled kid.”

“Yeah. I thought so too. A friend of mine came and helped me last minute and we tied him up. I told him a lot of things and he seemed to be listening to me. For a second I thought we could be… not the way we used to be, obviously, but a family. I thought that as long as we had each other, it would be enough.” She turns to him for the first time since she started. “This is stupid, but I saw you when I was feeling sorry for myself,” she says, and automatically feels the blush rising to her cheeks; it makes her feel either dumb or crazy. She can’t decide which one.

Rafa quirks an eyebrow at her. “As in a ghost of me?”

“Kind of,” she admits. “It was more like me in the form of you.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Well, I’m glad you in the form of me could provide you with a pep talk.”

“You told me that I needed to keep being there for him. That if I wanted him to be my brother, I needed to tell him that,” she says. “He — killed people. And not just fed on them. He tied a noose around their necks and hung them from the rafters. And later on, I paid the ultimate price to get him something that could help him not feed on people anymore. The person he was working with — shot me, and I — God.” She tries to stop her hands from trembling against her lap. Tears blur her vision and throw the room out of focus. “I can’t believe I actually thought it would work. That after everything, we could just go back to being a family like it was so _easy_.”

“You did what you thought was right,” Rafa tells her. He lays a hand over her shoulder and gives it a firm squeeze. “I bet he regrets a lot of things now.”

Kate snorts incredulously and her lips quirk up. But it feels wrong; it’s tight on her mouth, more like a sneer than a smile. “ _Good_ ,” she says cruelly. “I hope he regrets it for the rest of his long, long life.”

Rafa just looks at her. “Now that’s not the Katalina I know.”

“Yeah,” Kate says. “That’s because she’s dead. I’m dead, Rafa.”

Something in the back of her mind shudders and falls into motion. It’s an admission she hadn’t been aware of minutes, even seconds ago. _I’m dead_ , she thinks, running the words over in her head like a mantra she can’t quite understand, like a hymn she hasn’t learned yet.  _How long have I been dead?_

Her daddy’s church feels bigger than it did before.

“Well,” Rafa starts, “welcome to the club.”

Kate swallows against the sudden emotion lodged in her throat. She thinks of him burning and falling to pieces in the sunlight. All to protect her. _I never thought I’d see you again,_ she thinks, _and now here you are._ “What are you doing here anyway?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” he says. “You were there.”

Kate closes her eyes for a moment and opens them again. “No, I mean what are you doing _here_?” she stresses the word and gestures around them. “This was my daddy’s church when we still lived in Bethel.” And the words feel strange in her mouth, still feels _wrong_ in a way she can’t articulate. “And… I have to admit, I didn’t know culebras went to heaven. I’d hoped, but seeing you here...” She lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been keeping in. “It’s just a lot of take in.” She considers the possibility of her daddy being here somewhere. After all, if Rafa is sitting here next to her now, a culebra who’s lived many years, then surely her daddy, a man who found God anew in his final moments, could find eternal peace as well.

Maybe he is with her mama.

Maybe it’s only a matter of time before she finds them, too.

In a corner of her soul, she thinks of Scott.

She crushes that thought as soon as it forms.

Rafa has grown completely silent. His face falls into a carefully constructed picture of neutrality. She isn’t sure why, but he seems to be struggling, trying to piece something together in his mind. “Kate,” he says after a long pause. Her real name coming from him should make her feel all sorts of gentle, sweet things, but instead it sounds so sad it makes her chest hurt. “I think you might be mistaken about something.”

“What do you mean?” she says, but the words come without sound. “Mistaken about what?”

Rafa takes her hand and holds it tightly, an urgent gesture that makes her look up at him in alarm. “I can’t say,” he says slowly, his expression pained. “But this church — you need to be careful, Kate.”

“What are you talking about?” Kate whispers back, unsure why she’s even doing so. She feels that same creeping sense of trepidation that had fallen over her minutes ago, the one that tells her she should be afraid. But Rafa can’t be right. He just can’t be. And just as soon as she feels it, without her even noticing it, that fear settles and edges back into the shadows. “This church is where I grew up. It’s where my daddy would give his sermons. It’s one of the safest places I could ever be.” She squeezes his hand in hers and rests both of their hands against his chest, where the sunlight seems to tumble over his shoulders and dance off their entwined fingers. “How else would you be able to sit in the sun right now?”

“I’m not burning because none of this is real,” he tells her. “All of this is something from your memories. Just because I’m sitting in it doesn’t mean I’m actually touching it.”

“Okay,” she says, even though nothing is okay. None of it makes any sense to her. She wants to ask so many questions but can barely process any of them, replaces one with another as soon as they enter her head.

“I can’t say its name because it’ll find me,” he continues. “Names have power. Don’t give up yours.”

“I don’t understand,” Kate says, carefully extracting her hand from his. She feels that familiar stirring in her chest again, a rising panic she can’t seem to stop. “What will find you?”

“This place is alive,” he says. “It’s — it takes all your memories and twists them. It makes you believe you’re where you’re supposed to be. It’ll make you forget. Don’t trust it. It’s just trying to trap you.” Rafa’s eyes seem to harden and glow in the midday light. “And whatever you do, _don’t_ tell it your name.”

“We’ve been using each other’s names this entire time,” she points out.

“That’s different,” he says insistently. “We’ve already given each other our names. It doesn’t just want to hear it. It wants you to talk to it, to _trust_ it. As soon as you’ve done that, you’ve given it everything you have. It’ll own you. You’ll _belong_ to it.”

Kate bristles and thinks _I don’t belong to anyone_. “And how do I know you’re not trying to trick me?” she asks lowly. She feels her fear resting low in her belly and tries to turn it into strength. _I’m not afraid of you_ , she lies. She wishes she had her crossbow. “How do I know you’re really Rafa?”

This time, Rafa smiles. “There’s the girl I know,” he says fondly. “The truth is? You don’t. It’s probably better that way.”

“Why?” She tries to sound accusing, but it comes out as a whisper.

“It’ll keep you alive. As alive as you can be, anyway,” he says. “And it’ll be easier when we have to say goodbye again.”

And all her suspicion and attempts at courage fade away. “You’re leaving?”

“I can’t stay here for long,” he explains. “The only reason I could even get here is because I heard you crying.”

“Crying?” she asks numbly. Everything around her feels muted, dimmed of color and light in the face of him leaving her. She doesn’t want to be alone again. “Rafa. I wasn’t crying.”

Rafa shrugs. “Some part of you was, I guess.”

And what a curious thing that is, for someone to see things in her she didn’t even know existed.

 _But you’ve felt that before,_ she tells herself. _And look where it got you._

She refuses to think his name. There is nothing left. Not even memory.

“I’m sorry you died,” Kate whispers. “I’m sorry you died protecting me. It ended up being for nothing.”

Rafa touches her cheek, wiping away tears she doesn’t remember shedding. “ _You_ are never for nothing,” he says, and then he kisses her.

It’s a tentative, gentle press of lips, but Kate trembles anyway. It’s been _so long_ since she’s felt wanted, months since she’s been touched with sincere affection. And Rafa is so, so affectionate, so kind and sweet it makes her ache with all the things that could have been.

He could have kissed her in that parking lot.

He could have been her one friend left in the world.

He could have lived.

So she presses herself into him and kisses him back. _Just this once,_ she thinks. Just this once she wants to pretend everything is going to be okay.

He runs his hand over her hair and smiles against her lips before resting his forehead against hers. “Been wanting to do that for awhile,” he says softly.

“Me, too,” she says just as softly. She bites her lip and thinks, _I will remember this._ They are two dead things kissing in a church. It’s almost funny, but not quite.

“Remember what I said,” he tells her. His hands leave her face and she mourns the loss of him already, mourns him for the second time. “Don’t let them know your name. And Kate?”

“What?”

“Just keep going. You’ll find your way.”

“Wait,” Kate says. Her voice seems to echo off the church walls, like she’s suddenly speaking to him through a tunnel. Her memory shifts and opens wide until she’s standing in the middle of it, an empty chasm, a lost relic of faith, a tattered image of people she will never see again. It is the saddest thing she has ever seen. “Rafa, I don’t —”  

But he’s already gone.

* * *

In this strange, dim moment, beyond his comprehension or reasoning, Richie thinks of Uncle Eddie and _remembers_. He thinks of his well-worn face and his grey-peppered temples and gravelly voice as they rode down the interstate, just the two of them (and like many bright, splintered things, it is that detail that stands stark against the dark landscape of his memory the most, because he has no others like it).

He remembers sitting next to him on the drive back to Kansas after a job _to get a taste of how it’s done_ , Eddie had said. He remembers him taking a swig of his beer and leaning back in his seat before saying, “Here’s a piece of advice, kid. Don’t work with dead men.”

He remembers being confused but not saying anything. He was fifteen and gangly, not yet grown into his height, and so quiet Eddie would sometimes ask him if he was mute. _But,_ he’d mutter, scratching the back of his neck, _if you were, guess there’s no point in askin’._

Richie has never been mute. There was always just too much to say.

He remembers Eddie peering over at him from the corner of his eye, sensing his silent question. “Men who don’t pull their weight in a job are dead men. And there’s no score if you’ve got a bunch of dead assholes pulling you down. Those assholes back there? Dead men.”

The Dead Man’s Rule, Eddie had called it. He always enjoyed a bit of irony.

It is this rule Richie thinks of now, as him and Seth watch the fog set in. The trees of his five-year home twist and rustle around them, their leaves shivering like tender bodies in snow. They rest silhouetted against the slow descent of mist, huddled so close together that Richie almost thinks they’ve shifted while they weren’t looking. He takes one last look at the sky, just in time to see the stars slowly blink out as they’re obscured by a blanket of darkness. All at once, everything falls silent.

And then the shrieking begins.

Richie hears Seth pull out his pistol. The soft click of the releasing safety only accentuates the suffocating, sour smell of _fear_ coming off of him _._ It presses against Richie’s senses until he feels sick, a slow rising nausea that makes him want to retch. “What the _fuck_ is that?” Seth asks, eyes darting everywhere and anywhere as he tries to pinpoint the direction of the disembodied voices. “Shit,” he says, voice wavering as he winces and throws his hands over his ears. “It’s so goddamn _loud_ —”

Richie grits his teeth through the pain. He feels the pulsing in his eardrums, wonders if that’s them rupturing and knitting themselves back together again. But he can’t be bothered with that now; instead he twists and spreads his hands over Seth’s, trapping them there and adding extra cover. “Don’t move,” he mouths.

Seth nods and remains still. He clenches his jaw and watches him intently, an anxious kind of reaction that makes Richie wonder if he’s bleeding.

After a few moments, the screaming recedes into low wails. Even with the ringing in his ears, he can hear how pitiful they sound; a mournful cadence of sound trapped in the absence of light. Below the background hum of the universe is something else, something his mind struggles to process in the aftermath of pain.

He releases Seth and listens.

“What?” Seth whispers. He lowers his arms and follows his gaze into the murky distance. He doesn’t release his hold on the gun. “Richard, tell me what’s going on.”

“You don’t hear that?” Richie asks grimly. If this were any other time, he would make a cutting remark about his brother believing him. But now all he feels is dread slithering through his innards like a snake. It might eat him alive, if nothing else gets to him first.

“If you mean the trees yelling, then yeah, I kinda got that.”

“Not that,” Richie says. “They’re not just screaming. They’re… calling out. To me.”

“Okay.” Seth raises an eyebrow. “As in they’re _talking_ to you?” His tone is partially skeptical, mostly incredulous; for once, Richie can’t blame him. “What’re they saying?”

Richie swallows and closes his eyes. He hears their voices in his head. They call his name and it feels like phantom arms reaching past a veil, so close that he can almost see them taking shape; soft, cold fingertips caress his face —

He shudders and opens his eyes again. The shadows skitter into the back of the trees and the back of his mind like frightened specters. They remind him of every dark thought he’s ever had.

Seth is openly staring at him.

“They’re crying for help,” Richie murmurs. “They want me to follow them.”

“Yeah, not happening,” Seth shoots back. “Tell them we’ll find our own tour guide, thanks.”

“Do you think they know where Kate is?” Richie says quietly, mostly to himself. He wonders if they were people, just like her. People who died and got lost in the fall. People who trembled through their final moments and believed they would end up somewhere better. He does not hear her voice in the congregation of souls, but he pictures her reaching out in terror; he sees her face twisted in pain as she rots in the cold manifestation of his failure.

He fears for her.  

He fears there is no more of her to find.

All because of him.

“Oh, no. Don’t even think about it.” Seth walks right up into his personal space and points an accusing finger at him. “We are _not_ doing what the dead tree people say, Richard. Hey. Look at me.”

Richie looks at him.

“We are going to find Kate,” Seth says, resting both hands on his shoulders. “But we’re doing it our way.”

“They don’t feel evil,” Richie tries, but it sounds unconvincing even to him. “What if they’ve seen something — ?”

“Richard,” Seth cuts in. “You said it yourself. You think you’re safe, and then it’s lights out.”

He can’t really argue with that.

“Yeah,” Richie finally says. “I got it.”

“Good. Okay.” Seth lets him go and sighs. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I want to get through this creepy ass forest pronto, _without_ some ghost trying to drag me up by my —”

A gunshot cracks the air open.

Richie smells his own blood before he realizes why.

“ _Richard!_ ” Seth screams his name as he falls, a flurry of sideways movement and erupting chaos. Richie hears him shooting back at their unknown enemy as he crouches beside him, keeping his finger on the trigger. The trees are roused to life around them, alight with terror and frenzied cries. “Shit. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Richie snaps. He grimaces and feels around his middle where he was hit, cupping his bloody hand against the wound. Slowly, painfully, he feels his body push the bullet out until it’s resting in his palm. “I can take a hit.”

Two more shots ring out from the fog.

“Someone’s persistent,” Seth mutters.

Richie rises and lets his fangs fall.

They are at a disadvantage. In this open clearing between the trees, it would be easy for someone to attack and pick them off. While he can survive bullets as long as they don’t pierce his heart, his brother is not so immune. They could jump behind the trees to use as cover, but he doesn’t want to get too close to them; he can still see them crouched in the back of his mind, as if in waiting.

In the distance, a figure takes shape.

“Alright, bastard. Come on out,” Seth says, keeping his gun trained on the approaching intruder.

“Well ain’t this a sight,” a deep voice calls. “I knew it was only a matter of time before I saw you boys again.”

Richie and Seth exchange puzzled looks.

“Is that…?” Richie raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, _shit_.” Seth runs a hand over his face.

Silhouetted against the cold, stagnant air is Earl McGraw.

“Welcome to hell, boys,” he says.


	4. iii.

“All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.”

— William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

 

* * *

She is floating.

She is floating and she is calm.

Nearly all pain and sorrow has left her as she flows with the tide, her hair spanning around her, her wide eyes watching the smear of stars flicker above like undiscovered countries.

She feels far away, weightless, like she’s never come into existence until now.

More water than girl.

More thought than flesh.

She smiles and thinks that she has been here before.

She is calm and she is ready.

She feels the tears come anyway. It is an empty notion of fragility and tender echo of all she has lost in this vast, distant world. They slide down her cheeks and mix into the water.

She is passing through nature to eternity.

Her memory unfolds behind her eyelids; every image and idea of family and friendship and love cracks and splinters until all she is left with is a gaping sense of what she used to be. She is not that thing anymore.

She is not that person anymore.

She is a dismantled piece of machinery, her fragments broken down and scattered across the far reaches of the cosmos. Grit and muscle, sinking to the bottom. Blood and bone, drifting out to sea. She feels a resounding vibration deep in her chest; it is the only place she feels warm.

Everything she’s ever known is gently laid bare.

She wants to close her eyes and just let go.

Because even in the aching stillness, she can feel someone, somewhere, searching for her. She has no concept of what this means anymore, has long given up on firing neurons and rapid signals in her nervous system to tell her the importance of being found.

All she knows is that she is _tired_.

She is tired and she is alone. It is the way everyone must die.

The stars swell and the sky opens.

She, and all her broken parts, drift to shore. She watches the light pool through the cracks in the macrocosm of her existence and feels herself, beyond reason or feeling or want, slowly being knitted back together again.

The earth rests solid against her back.

When she rises, she looks behind her at the open stretch of sea.

Except it is no sea. It is a river, her newly formed mind supplies. She is tired and she is by a river.

Her mother and father wave at her from the other side.

* * *

“You know, old man, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were holding a grudge,” Seth says casually, a stark contrast to the way he’s keeping his gun aimed at Earl. “Good law-abiding man like you? I would’ve thought your heart was at least two sizes bigger.”

Earl cocks his gun in answer. “Not as big as the hole I’m gonna put through you and your brother, shithead.”

“I can take him,” Richie whispers to Seth, who ignores him.

“Hey, come on,” Seth says imploringly, flashing his best charming smile. “We’re all friends here. Just a couple of folks passing through a creepy forest. Now, we could have a showdown right here, right now. Or we could all go about our merry way and stay in our own little corners of hell. You’re happy, I’m happy, everything’s gumdrops and rainbows.”

Earl is not impressed. “You think I’m some kinda idiot, kid? I know you’re not really dead. Which raises the question of why you’re even down here in the first place.” He smirks and tightens his fingers over the grip of the gun. “Now, dependin’ on your answer, this could either be a calm discussion or another bottle o’ hooch situation. So I’d think very carefully about what you’re gonna say.”

“Or,” Richie starts, his features scaling over, “I could just eat you right now.”

“My brother’s not really a fan of ultimatums,” Seth explains. “Makes him pretty tetchy. Sure you understand.”

Earl’s calm veneer wavers for just a moment. “So you’re one o’ them. Something nasty sure got its teeth into you, didn’t it?”

“What’s it to you?” Richie snaps. He doesn’t want to sit around and share all the intimate details of how he was turned, especially with Seth standing right next to him. “If you know what I am, then you know I could do some serious damage.”

“Maybe,” Earl agrees. “But somethin’ tells me you’re not interested in that right now. I’ve been on the job for years, boy, I know how to read people.”

“We could say the same about you,” Seth interjects. He motions over at him with small, sweeping jerks of his gun. “What, you gonna keep us standing still all day, old man? What happened to blowing holes into our skulls? Can’t get it up?”

“Keep talkin’ like that and I’ll change my mind,” Earl says. “Besides, I heard one of my bullets make impact. Wondered why both of you were still standing when I got here, but now I know. So,” he stresses the word, this time directing his attention to Richie, “now’s a good time to answer my question. What are you two doin’ down here?”

“We’ve got some business to take care of,” Seth says. Earl lets out a low noise of acknowledgement but it does not seem to appease him. “Let’s just say we got involved with some really powerful guys, and we’ve come to collect what’s owed to us,” he carries on, as though he can bullshit his way through this explanation and get Earl to believe them through pure force of will alone.

“We’re looking for someone,” Richie admits. “A girl. Her name is Kate.”

As far as Richie is concerned, they have no time for bullshit or subterfuge.

“ _Richard_ ,” Seth hisses. “A little discretion would be nice.”

“Why does it matter? He didn’t believe you anyway.”

“Yeah, _now_ he won’t —”

“You two knuckleheads seem to be under the impression that I’m in the mood to fuck around,” Earl grouses. “Think again.”

“Alright, alright, fine,” Seth says, annoyed. “So we might be looking for a girl named Kate. Brown hair, short, believes in God. You seen her?”

Earl just stares at them. “Why on God’s green earth would I tell you anything?”

“Because this isn’t about us,” Richie says. He can feel that familiar anger crawling up from that nameless pit in his stomach. “It’s about her. So have you seen her or _not_?” he practically snarls.

“Well, now. Ain’t that somethin’,” Earl comments dryly. “Under most circumstances, I’d say you two were full of shit. But you’re tellin’ the truth.”

“Very astute,” Seth says sarcastically. “Answer the damn question.”

“I don’t know if you two have noticed,” Earl says, “but if she hasn’t heard you two busting through here yet, then she’s probably not around. I haven’t seen her.”

“How _did_ you hear us, anyway?” Seth asks. “Thought this was my brother’s memory.”

“Sure,” Earl allows. “But this place is full of dead ends and looping roads that send you on paths you never were supposed to be on. Take one wrong turn and you’re done. No more good days left, even in this shitstain pit we call the afterlife.” He uses his free hand to point at the trees around them. “These poor bastards couldn’t catch a break.”

Richie feels something inside him fizzle and die.

What if she’s gone?

What if they’re too late?

It was one thing to know her soul had been sent to Xibalba. It was a lifeline he’d grasped onto instantly, automatically, with no regard for the throne or empire he’d worked so hard to obtain. It is not like him, he realizes, to be so careless. When he thinks back to chasing after her when she fled from him, he remembers how careless he’d been _then_ , too. How willing he was to run after her with his guns blazing with barely any regard for caution or deliberation.

He is a scientist.

He is a lock artist.

He is a prodigy.

He is a master tactician. The dedicated one.

All undone by one tiny girl from Texas.

But now the idea that she may no longer be that girl he knows throws him. And suddenly it seems so fucking unfair, like he’s the butt of some cosmic joke. Like the universe is dangling the possibility of her on a string in front of him, and he’s running at it like some dumb salivating dog.

Like he’s failed her again.

“That doesn’t mean much,” Seth says, though his voice is less forceful than it was before. As hotheaded as he is, even he can see the situation for what it is. “I know her well enough to know she’s a pain in the ass when she wants to be. She wouldn’t just fall down a rabbit hole and go down without a fight.”

Richie is too tired to be bitter.

Earl grunts in approval. “Maybe not. But here’s a piece of advice I’m going to give you two, so listen close. Leave her be.”

“What?” Seth says, deathly quiet.

Richie feels such intense hatred for the man in that moment that he can feel his fangs brim with poison.

“I don’t know who she is or why you’re lookin’ for her,” Earl says, “but chances are, she’s here because something you did put her here. You wouldn’t be trampling all around the depths of hell if that weren’t the case.”

Both of them are quiet at that.

“So,” Earl continues, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re doin’ more harm than good at this point. Let the dead rest, boys. It’s the merciful thing to do.”

“Have you seen this place?” Seth says incredulously. “Nothing about it is goddamn ‘merciful.’ You’re off your rocker.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Earl asks. “You may be so tone-deaf that you can’t see it, but I do. The Gecko brothers are here to get what they want, to hell with the consequences for anyone else. I can’t believe Frederico hasn’t chased you down to the gates of hell himself yet.”

And that’s when the change in Seth sets in. It’s so subtle that most people probably wouldn’t notice; the casual lift of his shoulders and the shrewd tilt of his head. A smirk slowly begins to replace his frown. “Funny story,” Seth says in idle amusement. He waves his gun around like it’s an extension of his arm. “You see, sheriff, it seems your good ol’ ranger found some common ground with petty thieves after all. Hell, we even fought alongside each other like a band of brothers when the going got rough.” He juts out his bottom lip and slowly rolls his shoulders, as if he’s mulling something over. “Now that I think about it, I’d even wager to say we couldn’t have gotten out of it without him.”

It’s something about his brother that Richie resents and admires. How quickly he can discard one mask and replace it with another; how easily he can feel some daunting emotion and cover it up with slick swagger and carefully constructed lines. It’s a skill he has attempted to replicate on more than one occasion but hasn’t been able to fully perfect. In the end, it’s always just an act. But with Seth it feels more natural, more _real_ , an act he knows how to lose himself in. When he looks in a mirror he sees another face.

Sometimes Richie wonders if the illusion fools Seth too.

To his surprise, Earl just shrugs. “For a couple of infamous criminal masterminds, you two morons aren’t very bright.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Seth replies. “Looks like we outsmarted you, ranger.”

Earl lets out a hearty chuckle. “So you really think that just because Frederico helped your sorry asses out a few times, you’re some sort of fire-forged friends?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Seth mutters.

“I know Frederico,” Earl begins, “and I know that just because he helped you once doesn’t mean he’ll do it again.”

“You sure? ‘Cause you haven’t even let us tell the story yet —”

“Don’t need to. There’s only two people he would break his promise for, and it ain’t you bastards. That’s good enough to me.”

Seth clenches his jaw and doesn’t say anything.

“This is a waste of time,” Richie finally snaps. “If you have nothing useful to say and you’re not gonna fight us, then get out of our way.”

Earl slowly lowers his gun. “Don’t need to fight ya. Two idiots like yourselves wandering around the place like this? You’re gonna get yourselves killed all on your own. You won’t see me so much as pissing on the flames, neither.”

“We’ll consider it a blessing in disguise,” Seth remarks dryly.

“But,” Earl starts, ignoring that comment, “if for some reason you two cockroaches are able to crawl back out of here, then just remember that you’re not the only ones with these new _gifts_.”

“If you mean the good ol’ boy Frederico, then yeah, we already know, thanks,” Seth says dismissively. “Soul of a ranger, can’t be turned, blah blah blah. Saw it in the first movie, wasn’t impressed by the shitty sequel.”

“I’ve always told him he has the soul of a ranger,” Earl says. “But he has the soul of something else, too.”

Seth and Richie exchange silent glances.

Seth hesitates for only a moment. “The soul of _what_ exactly?” he asks finally.

Earl smiles humorlessly. “Not so unimpressed anymore, are we?”

And then he’s gone.

“Shit,” Seth curses and holsters his gun.

“Forget it. Let’s move,” Richie says. “And don’t touch the trees.”

“We literally just saw a ghost before our eyes,” Seth shoots back. “I don’t think this is something you can just ‘forget.’ The guy freaking got the last word in and Houdinied himself away. What a prick.”

“Maybe we can do it too.”

Seth stops and stares at him. “Come again?”

Richie stares at the empty spot where Earl was standing. “Maybe it’s not just ghosts. Maybe we can leave, too.”

“Okay. _How_?”

Richie shrugs. “Maybe it’s the intent that matters.”

“Oh, sure, so we just click our shiny red heels together and viola! Teleportation to the next circle.” Seth gives him a withering look that’s so condescending Richie has to resist the urge to hit something. “In case you haven’t noticed, Richard, we’re not in fucking _Kansas_ anymore, no matter what your weird memory hallucination thing says.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” he hisses between clenched teeth. He wants to say something biting like asking for _actual_ better ideas and not mindless whining, but he can’t seem to find it in him at the moment. He doesn’t want to seem so unhinged, so fucking _bothered_ by such asinine comments, but he is. As stupid as it is, it’s the principle behind it; sometimes he thinks Seth doesn’t argue with him because he believes he’s got bad ideas, but simply because he knows he has good ones.

 _Keep your head in the game_ , he tells himself. _This isn’t about you._

This isn’t about him.

He breathes deeply and thinks it over and over again.

Seth sighs and gestures at him in a circular motion. “Alright, fine. So what do we do? Think about — what?”

 _Think about her_ , Richie thinks. He doesn’t say that, though. “Think about somewhere else. Anywhere.”

He closes his eyes.

* * *

When he opens his eyes again, they are standing in the middle of an empty patch of dirt. Around them, the forest stretches out like a vast green sea until it disappears so far into the distance even his improved sight can’t track it any longer. The sky is a deep, cloudless blue — and Richie flinches the moment he realizes he’s standing in the sunlight.

He stares at his hands in alarm when he doesn’t feel any burning.

Seth quirks an eyebrow at him. “That’s new.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, still looking at his hands. It’s been months since he’s felt the sun without pain. He feels like once he takes a step, his body will catch up with the illusion and dissolve into ash on the wind. Fragile, ephemeral, useless dust.

It hits him in that moment how much he’s come to fear bright, sharp things.

Seth has already walked a few feet ahead of him. “Is that… is that an _actual_ yellow brick road?”

Richie looks up in confusion, his attention suddenly centered on the task at hand. _Focus_.

Spread out in front of them are four roads, one of which is indeed yellow and made of brick.

He knows this. He has been here before. “We have to choose,” he clarifies. “It’s something I saw when I was getting intel with Winchester on Malvado. One of his guys, the one with the extra arms —”

“You mean the one that had me tied up and rubbed down so he could have an easier time peeling my goddamn skin off?” Seth cuts in, giving him a scathing look. _One of the snake pits you threw me into_ , he knows he wants to say. He can practically hear his voice saying the words. “Yeah, I don’t think I need a fucking reminder about that guy.”

Richie sighs and carries on. “He said in order to go forward we had to choose a path. He used something called the runes of the road. All of them were different colors and each one corresponded to some kind of choice or fate.” He points at them as he speaks. “White road, smooth and clear. Your tribute pleases the Lord. Red road, your debt is dear. Blood must be given. Yellow road,” he pauses and tries not to think too much of her face, “a gift returned. Fortune shines upon you.” He isn’t looking at Seth but he already knows the expression he’s making, can see the idea coalescing so clearly in his mind it’s as if they’re the same person in one body. “Black road, your soul is burned.”

“Well fuck,” Seth blurts out. “Let’s be on our merry way then, Dorothy.”

Under most circumstances, this would be the logical course of action. Who is he to flick off the promise of fortune? But something sour and uneasy slides in between his ribs at the idea of going down that path. He cannot place why or even completely justify it to himself, but he can’t stem the feeling of it being the _wrong_ choice.  “Don’t you think this seems way too easy?”

Seth does seem to pause and consider that. “Like some kind of trick?”

“No. More like…” He struggles to find the right words to make him understand. “More like a lie by omission. We think we’re finding one thing but instead we’re finding something else. I don’t think she’s down that road.”

“Why?” Seth asks. “Is this another one of your ‘feelings’? Because the last time we went with that I almost got my ears blown out by tree monsters.”

“It’s not just a feeling! It’s more than that.” He runs a hand through his hair in frustration, not giving a damn about shaking it loose from the gel. “She _died_. And not just died, she was _shot._ Twice. Do you really think that she’s been sent somewhere where ‘fortune is shining upon her’?”

Seth stares at him silently, angrily. It’s something Richie is getting used to. “Jesus,” he says finally. “You’ve really given up on her, haven’t you?”

“I’m just trying to be _realistic_ ,” Richie grinds out.

“No, you’re acting like she’s a lost cause. Look, I’ve been incredibly patient throughout this whole operation so far. I’ve been letting you take the lead, I’ve let you call the shots and followed you into that forest against my better judgment, and now that we had a run-in with Mr. Gloom and Doom back there you’re ready to believe the worst because… what? She’s not strong enough?” Seth pauses and it feels deliberate, it feels _manipulative_ ; it makes Richie clench his fists so hard he smells blood. “If you think she’s a goner, then why are you here, Richard? Huh?” He throws his arms up. “Why are we doing any of this?”

“Would you _stop_ putting words in my mouth? What I _said_ was that she’s not going to be kicking her feet up somewhere like she’s on a goddamn vacation. Just because you think she’s some innocent little flower doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen, Seth. You know that just as well as I do, and pretending otherwise is a sure fire way to get us bent over and screwed.”

“Okay, back the fuck up. ‘Innocent little flower’? Are you kidding me?” Seth looks like he wants to laugh, but his anger wins out instead. “I’m the one who was with her for three months; if you think I believe she’s some kind of angel, then think again, Richard.”

“Oh, yeah,” Richie says bitingly. “You just know her _so well_. Between getting high and finding more of that shit to get you high, you two really bonded. Did you get her a friendship bracelet, too, for helping you hold the needle?”

Before he knows it, Seth’s got a fist twisted in his shirt, his eyes so close and bright with rage Richie sees himself reflected in them. “ _Shut up_ ,” Seth seethes. “Shut the _fuck up_.”

And some distant, closed off part of Richie feels guilt. Guilt, anger, pain, _shame_. It all mingles together in that well of emotion he calls a body. His brother thinks he doesn’t know or care about the black flames licking up his arm, doesn’t think he understands the significance of the raised and inked scar tissue on his neck. But he does. As soon as he saw it in Kate’s blood — the tattoo, the drugs, the sickness and the desperation in tenuous human connections — he knew what it meant.

Seth would call it forgetting, but Richie knows it as mourning. He knows it as throwing himself into jobs and the clean slide of metal through their uncle’s chest cavity. He knows it as tossing their old identities over a cliffside and having the world forget their names.

He thinks of Seth lying in a dirty motel room somewhere, drowning in his own vomit or overdosing on heroin and it makes him sick. It is a type of mourning he will never be ready to know.

“You know I’m right,” Richie whispers. “About the road.”

“No,” Seth spits, still raw, still angry, “I don’t, Richard.”

“These roads have nothing to do with the choices we make. It’s about where she would be. And I’m telling you, yellow is wrong.”

“Where else would she be? Red?” Seth asks in a way Richie thinks is meant to be rhetorical.

Richie has never been one for abiding by social conventions. “No. Black.”

Seth lowers his head and sighs, long-suffering and weary. He still has his hands balled up against his collar. “Why,” he finally mutters.

“What?”

“Why _black_?” Seth says, raising his voice and straightening. “She died in the most fucked up way possible. I get it, all right? But that’s not the only option here. What did you say the other one was? Blood is given?” He shrugs, going for casual but looking more lost than anything else. “It’s just as good a guess as the freaking _death road_.”

And there is something about what he’s saying that gives Richie pause. It is not reconsideration at his decision, and it is not anger at being argued with. It’s something he felt when he sat in that car with her a week ago, when she was still warm and whole and alive and giving him a tongue-lashing, too.

It is faith, he realizes. Blind, stupid faith. Maybe those three months with her rubbed off on his brother after all, in ways he doesn’t even realize.

It makes him feel angry and, worst of all, utterly helpless. It is the reason he has kept the circumstances of her death to himself, why he has curled into his own grief and allowed himself to fester in it. It is the reason why he wears the mask of a monster and can believe himself when he looks in the mirror. It is the reason why Seth can believe him, too.

He remembers her crying in pain and unbridled rage. He remembers her telling him to burn in hell. He remembers the shattered vestiges of the girl she used to be, remembers her closing her eyes and fading away in a horrific mockery of sleep. He remembers her lying in her own blood, just like the first time he ever saw her floating in that pool.

And it is easier to pretend he does not grieve for her, just as it is easier to pretend he does not grieve for Monica Garza (and sometimes he can still see her mangled body behind his eyelids like the ones he carved out of her head). It is easier to claim the empire he wanted so badly and act like the boss than it is to look his brother in the eye and tell him he failed her. It is easier to do what he has always done and push that rage and sadness and pain down into the depths of his existence than to act like he has a right to feel them at all.

He wants to spare Seth from all of that; he wants to carry this burden on his own. It is why he lets Seth think he cares more about the power and prestige; it is why he lies by omission; it is why he doused their father in gasoline all those years ago.

Because as much as Seth views himself as his keeper, Richie has never viewed himself as anything but an older brother.

Seth is still staring at him, but something flickers in his expression. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” is all he can say.

“There is, isn’t there?” Seth presses. “You’ve been acting weird this whole time and I’ve let you brush me off, but I’m done with that song and dance. Tell me.”

“It’s not _important_ —”

“Bullshit.” Seth points an accusing finger at him. “Honestly, brother, if you’re gonna lie to me, you’re gonna have to do a whole lot better than that.”

“I’m not fucking lying to you,” Richie lies, swatting Seth’s hand away. “I told you I had a feeling. Why can’t you just trust me? This is exactly what happened before Mexico and it’s why we’re in this goddamn mess in the first place!”

“Because I _know you_ , Richard! And I know when you’re pulling a fast one over someone. And let me tell you, if you want me to step one foot on that charred black piece of shit road, you’re gonna have to come up with a reason other than the voices told you so!”

“You’re never gonna fucking let that go, are you?” Richie seethes. “No matter what I do you’re going to hold that over my head. Whenever I so much as take a shit you’re gonna be there, accusing me of losing my mind! What do you think I am, some kind of puppet?”

Seth spreads his arms out wide. “Well you were before!” he yells. His voice echos all around them, like they’re standing in a tunnel, but everything remains still. “It’s about Kate, isn’t it?” he asks suddenly. “You said it’s not about the choices we made but about _hers_. What fucking choice is that, Richard? Are you telling me _she_ chose this road?”

“In a way,” he whispers. He’s having a hard time speaking past the sudden lump in his throat.

“What was that?” Seth asks insistently, but Richie remains silent. “Jesus Christ,” he breathes. “What happened to Jacknife being a Gecko brothers joint, huh? To being a united front? I thought we agreed we were going to be working _together_ in this, Richard.”  

Richie sneers, and suddenly the onslaught of anger overrides his more vulnerable emotions. “Yeah, we ‘agreed’ after you smashed my head over a table and let the sun scorch half my face off.”

“Seriously?” Seth says, incredulous. “You’re still pissed about that? I just needed to knock some sense into you; you know I’d never actually...” He pauses. “You don’t _actually_ think I’d really — ?” And as pissed as Seth is, Richie can see the slight wounded look in his eyes.

“What? No,” Richie says dismissively. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you completely undermined my authority in front of everyone.”

“So that’s what this is about? You’re pissed because I _embarrassed_ you?” Seth asks, in that tone of voice that makes Richie feel like a petulant child.

“I’m pissed because you waltzed right in there like you owned the place and forced my hand. What was I supposed to do, Seth? Refuse and have everyone know new management is full of incompetent assholes who can’t even agree who’s really in charge? ‘Cause that’s a great start to our empire. I can see it now; the Gecko brothers, two schmucks in a pissing contest: the new lords of the culebras. That’d look _real_ great for our credibility.”

Seth rolls his eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he scoffs. “You know I don’t give a damn about politics.”

“And that’s your problem, Seth,” Richie says. “You never think things through. You never stopped to think that it’d put a huge target on my back because what you did makes me look _weak_.”

“All right, I get it. I wasn’t trying to make you look bad to the culebra masses. But you were on some weird, screwed-up power trip. You weren’t going to listen to a thing I said otherwise.”

“How can you _possibly_ know that? You didn’t even try!”

“Excuse me for thinking you would be unreasonable! It’s not like you sold me or snake queen out or anything!”

“You think I _wanted_ you to get sliced up and killed? All I wanted was for you to get the money and for her to get a ticket to El Rey, so both of you could get what you wanted.” He steps in front of Seth until he’s right up in his face. He lowers his voice, so deathly quiet his words are almost inaudible. “So you can sit here and tell me I screwed up, but don’t _ever_ tell me I didn’t give a damn about you.”

“Like you gave a damn about Kate?” Seth says, just as quiet, just as poisonous. “‘Cause from where I’m standing, that seems to be _your_ problem, brother. How was she supposed to get what she wanted?”

“She’s got nothing to do with this,” he tells him. “She wasn’t ever supposed to be there at all.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Seth shoots back, a sardonic smile cutting across his lips. It reminds Richie of how he’d driven his fist into the railing of the oil rig, how he’d looked almost delirious with rage and pain and a damning sense of hostility that bordered on nihilism. “Let me tell you, it’s one of her special talents, getting herself involved with people she shouldn’t. But you know what I did? I made her leave. When the going got rough and things were looking bad for her, we went our separate ways.” His smile falters and edges into a deep frown; his eyes seem to glaze over, like he’s haunted by some ghost of a memory. “And she was pissed, but it was better that she was pissed and alive than _dead_.”

Richie isn’t sure if it’s the look on his face or his words that do it. Either way, he feels it lance through him so swiftly he can barely breathe. “I know,” he says softly. And all his anger, all his indignation and self-righteous fury at being treated like he’s number two just fades away, burns itself out like the embers of a dying fire. And it hurts, because as much as he wants to protect Seth from this truth, he feels like maybe he’s weak after all. Weak for feeling such regret at putting that look on his brother’s face; weak for not being able to do for her what Seth could.

He’d wanted her to live _so badly._

“And the most fucked up thing about this?” Seth continues, undeterred. “I know you gave a damn about her. I saw it when you —” He clenches his jaw. “I just know you did. But you gave more of a damn about taking over Malvado’s empire than you did about her.” He shrugs. “Shit, I don’t even know why _I_ care so much. We’ve screwed people over before. But Jesus, Richie,” and it’s the use of his nickname, the one he uses when he’s being affectionate, that seems to pierce him the most, “she trusted you. She trusted _us._ And you didn’t even try to keep her out of it.”

He tries to speak over the lump lodged in his throat. “I did,” he says quietly.

Seth raises a brow in confusion. “What?”

“I tried to make her leave,” he says, raising his voice. He feels the back of his eyes burn and reaches up to rub at them with his fingers. Everything is out of focus all of a sudden. “She wanted to come with me to the blood well because she wanted to help Scott. I tried pushing her out of the car but she wouldn’t get out.”

For once, Seth is speechless.

“I should’ve tried harder,” Richie goes on. “I should’ve just forced her out and driven off. I screwed up. She shouldn’t have come with me, but I let her, and it got her killed. I got her killed and she died hating me.”

Seth finally seems to find his words again. “Hey, hey, Richard,” he says carefully, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. “She doesn’t hate you. Come on.”

“She told me to _burn_ , Seth,” he says, and before he can stop it, he feels tears sting the corner of his eyes. He watches his brother stare at him with a stricken expression and he can’t help but feel _shame_. It is this shame that makes him think of their father roughly shoving him into walls and demanding he _stop fucking crying_. “She said she hoped I burned in hell.”

“Okay, okay, it’s fine.” Seth throws his arms around him and tucks his head against his shoulder. It’s all Richie can do to not just fold himself against his brother and fall to pieces. “She had just been shot; she was pissed off. I’d probably tell someone to fuck off too —”

“She wouldn’t take my venom,” he cuts in; it all just seems to pour out of him now. “I told Scott if he didn’t do it, I would. But she didn’t want us to. And I could’ve — I could’ve done it anyway, but I —” His voice breaks.

“Yeah,” is all Seth says.

“I would’ve if she’d asked,” he says helplessly. “I’m sorry, Seth.”

“Yeah, I know you would’ve. It’s fine. Hey, look at me.” Seth pulls back and pins him with a firm look. “It’s all gonna be _fine_. We’re gonna find her and set this right. Okay?” He claps an affectionate hand over his tear-stained face. “You got your balls on?”

Even though part of him knows Seth can’t promise him anything, knows that nothing he says can make this better, he feels something in him settle. Those words are comforting and familiar the way almost nothing else is. He lets out a shaky breath.

“Screwed on tight,” he rasps.

“All right, then,” Seth says. He glances over at the roads, still laid out innocently in front of them. He sighs. “So what’s the plan?”

“We pick one and go already,” Richie says.

“Yeah, obviously, but which one? I still feel like there’s something off here.” Seth throws him a look. “I know you think she died angry or whatever, but I still think it’s one of the other ones.”

“Your ‘feeling’ tell you that?”

“Shut it.”

Richie sighs. “All right, fine, we’re wasting time arguing about this. You take the one you want and I’ll take mine.”

Seth goes completely still. “What?” he asks lowly. “Richard —”

“No, just listen to me. We have a better chance of finding her if we split up.”

“Are you kidding me? You want to split up in this place? Staying together is like, rule number one in any kind of horror situation.”

“This isn’t a movie, Seth,” Richie says blankly.

“Yeah, I know that, smartass. I’m just saying. If this is some kind of weird penance thing to you, then you need to get the hell over it and leave it for later.”

“It’s not a ‘weird penance’ thing,” Richie argues. “It’s a ‘being pragmatic’ thing.”

And mostly that’s true. The longer they sit here, the chances of finding her dwindles; surely, if they both take their own road, then one of them will find her eventually. But part of him also resonates with Seth’s accusation; he’s never believed in something so meager and useless as _penance_ , but he feels drawn to this road, and he can’t help but feel that it leads to her.

He wonders why Seth can’t feel it too. In the end, maybe they have to choose their own path.

Seth is staring at him intently, his dark eyes narrowed and scrutinizing. It’s as if he’s carefully turning him over in his hands as he searches for something, tries to ferret out the meaning behind words. “Yeah. Something tells me they’re one in the same for you,” he says finally. “Because this sure as hell isn’t like you. We’ve never split up on a job before; not unless we had a full-proof plan we knew would work.”

“Just go,” Richie tells him. “We’ll meet up later. Like you said, it’s going to be fine. I don’t know why, but something just is telling me this is what we have to do.” As he says the words, he finds he knows them to be true, but cannot stem the tide of frustration at being unable to articulate _why_. He’s not trying to split them up because he doesn’t want to work with him, or because he’s given up arguing about which road to take. He can hear a brief echo coming from the broken black concrete in the distance, feel the pocket of nothingness ebb and flow towards him like the ghosts behind the veil. Like if he just reaches out and touches it, it would crack down the middle and splinter into a million pieces of fractured light and show him the way.

But like always, he doesn’t know how to express this to Seth. If he’s being honest, he hates his own non-explanations just as much as he does, if not more.

Maybe it is penance, after all.

“That’s not — god _damnit_ ,” Seth curses and runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “You know what? Screw this. Fine. I’ll come with you on the death road.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Uh, yeah,” Seth says. “I’d rather walk all the way back and take another road than split up. It’s not happening.”

Richie shrugs. “Dunno if we have that option, brother. This might be the end of the line.”

“Then we’re walking to the end of the line together. Got it?” He’s got that expectant look on his face; it’s the one he wore in the Titty Twister all those months ago before they went their separate ways. But unlike that time, he’s not turning away or taking it as a betrayal of their bond; he’s taking it as a challenge. As a way to prove that they can be the Gecko brothers again.

Richie wants to tell him they never stopped. But he figures maybe words aren’t needed here.

“Got it,” he finally says. “Let’s do it already. We’ve been standing here forever.”

He takes a single step.

When he turns around, Seth is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in the works since before S3 aired; ergo, absolutely none of this fic is canon compliant with that season. This is my sandbox now, y'all. 
> 
> Fair warning, though. While this little snippet isn't much, this is a monster of a fic I have planned. I have about 50k of it finished as of now and I'm nowhere near done. The rest is to come later. I can't promise I'll be able to update on a regular schedule, but I will try.


End file.
